SGP 4.0: An Agenda

Commentary Volume 27 comprises a collection of articles written by thought-leaders and academics on Singapore’s era of change, as our current Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong builds up what is termed as “the fourth generation” or 4G leaders.

This volume features valuable views and discussions by contributors who are considered experts in their field and sheds light on the possible challenges and opportunities these 4G leaders and our citizens might face, and guiding philosophies and considerations that they believe we should take in order to navigate Singapore through the midst of a shifting global order and technological disruption.

The Little Nation that Can: Singapore's Foreign Relations and Diplomacy

Volume 26 of the Commentary features a diverse compilation of essays and commentaries on Singapore's foreign relations and diplomacy.

It also presents our country's relationships with key institutions- the United Nations and the Association of South East Asian Nations. The chapters provide, in as economical a form as possible, a review of history of the relationship Singapore has had with a country or institution, an assessment of the current relationship and the projection of that relationship into the medium-term future, a decade from now.

In the past five years, there have been a number of developments across the world in the public sector space, particularly with regard to innovation. In Singapore, public policy-making and services have traditionally been the domain of a small number of elite technocrats. As with many other countries, the greater the strategic import, the smaller that number of technocrats involved. However, as digital and social media become ubiquitous in Singapore, the nature of information treatment — in particular the consumption, creation, and dissemination of information — inadvertently creates a shift in the social contract as we know it.

With a small group of like-minded colleagues, I have been working in the area of public sector innovation, related to the urbanisation process in developing countries as well as public sector issues in the urban context. This experience has been a varied one: from re-imagining municipal public service models in Bangladesh and informing Bhutan’s employment policy, to healthcare and hospital design in Singapore. Along the way, we have learnt many lessons about public policy, public services and the nature of public sector innovation. One of these is the challenge of silos among government bodies; the tension between politics and administration as well as conservative cultures that may not support the change and accompanying risk-taking needed to meet stated objectives; and the trade-offs between desired outcomes and the resources allocated for them.

As we look to the future, the interesting developments and trends that are emerging lead us to a number of hunches about the future of public sector innovation in Singapore. These hunches are also implicitly questions about the future of cities and populations, the potential of technology, and the nature of the human condition.

Hunch #1: Behavioural Insights will be Increasingly Important in Designing Policy for Citizens

As populations become more varied and textured, it becomes more difficult to create policy in a number of domains that are premised on generalisations or assumptions we might have of the various groups these policies seek to serve. This, of course, applies more to policy for targeted groups, or groups on the margins, rather than policy for the mainstream population.

In 2002, I was a 25-year-old creative director at a digital design studio startup when an old friend asked if I would help him develop an idea to bridge a social gap as well as a market gap he had identified.

As a rookie General Paper (GP) tutor, he was excited about the great potential in the subject to help broaden the perspectives of youths. However, he noticed a concurrent social problem: many young Singaporeans were graduating from the education system generally well-read but surprisingly selfcentred and apathetic. Many believed the whole point of their education was to prepare them for individual success but it had nothing to do with enabling them to help others in the community find success collectively.

He also observed that GP tuition was not widely offered by the market. It was certainly not for lack of demand: good GP grades are a prerequisite for university admission so students have vested interest to be as good as they can at it. The market gap was largely due to two factors. First, a common assumption among youths that GP was ‘unteachable’, too thick with knowledge to learn so attending tuition seemed pointless; second, commercial tuition centres were disinterested in offering GP tuition in a big way because it was difficult to guarantee one’s ability to ace it. They preferred to focus on offering tuition aimed at a more ‘teachable’ younger customer bracket (Primary and Secondary School) where a scalable ‘repeat-rinse-drill’ style of teaching could still generate decent results.

He pitched an intriguing proposal my way: Could we deal with both problems through one solution? What if we started an experimental tuition group that developed innovative new approaches to teaching GP not just for the short-term purpose of conquering an exam but for the longer and larger purpose of conquering societal apathy?

It was the sort of ridiculously senseless suggestion that makes most sense when you are young and idealistic. I bought in.

We began with 20 students but by the end of the first year of the venture, we managed to raise that number to a 100. That was sufficient feedback for us to put $40,000 down to officially start the School of Thought.

Ensuring the sustainability of our society and species is perhaps the biggest challenge of our times. The science about the adverse impact of mankind’s activities on the environment has been clear since the seventies. Yet no significant action, beyond numerous ineffective global meetings, has been taken to mitigate, much less reverse the decline.

Today, we can see clear evidence of the environmental effects — fast receding polar ice caps, declining fish stocks and erratic weather patterns which are leading to socio-economic issues such as lack of access to clean water, worsening land and air pollution, and increasing rural-urban income inequality.

Having been born into the generation that will likely bear the brunt of these effects, the options before me as I thought about it while I was at university, was either to be a driver of change or be a passenger of fate.

Three Pillars of Sustainability

It was in response to these global challenges that a group of my course mates at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and I founded the Sustainable Living Lab (SL2) with the vision of building a sustainable future through practical action.

We started out as a student club at NUS in 2009 and then transitioned into a social enterprise in 2011. Sustainability is often viewed within the scope of the environment, but we took a broader view as we felt that a sustainable future can only be achieved if we considered the interconnectedness of the environment, society and the economy - commonly referred to as the ‘Three Pillars Model of Sustainability’ by experts and practitioners in this field.

In this model, the environment represents a finite boundary within which human society and the economy exist. The economy is viewed as a subset of society with the reasoning that it is derived from society or created by it to efficiently exchange value within most, although not with all elements of society. Those that create social value without going through the market are, for example, stay-at-home mums and other caregivers.

ACRES was set up after a young Louis Ng was appalled to discover a baby chimpanzee bleeding after being punished for misbehaving during chimp photography sessions and spoke up about it. There were no organisations in Singapore willing to speak up against this cruelty at the time, so he started his own. Today, ACRES is an 18,000 member-strong organisation focused on eradicating illegal wildlife trade and raising awareness on animal cruelty. It rescues, treats, rehabilitates, and returns to the natural habitat where possible, injured native wild animals or animals that have been found to be part of an illegal trade. It runs a Rescue Centre that provides a permanent sanctuary to the animals that cannot be returned to their country of origin.

In this special interview, Ng tells us what motivated him to care about animal welfare and rights, and it turns out that it is not only for the sake of the creatures themselves but for the deeper mission to develop in Singaporeans the instinct to put right what has gone wrong.

Commentary: Firstly, while many care about animal welfare, what transformed you from someone who was personally interested in animals into a change agent aiming to affect broader society in the area of animal welfare?

Louis Ng [LN]: My interest in animals began when I was fourteen years old, but the turning point came after what I witnessed at the Singapore Zoo. A chimpanzee named Ramba hugged me and she was checking whether lips were bleeding after she had been punched. I will always be ashamed to say that it took a second incident before I decided it was time to speak up.

I shared my concerns with many of the fellow volunteers at the zoo and everyone said, “Yes, it is wrong, but we cannot speak up, because this one involves the government, you know?”

Hearing that remark was disappointing as I felt that the biggest crime is to know something is happening, and yet do nothing about it.

Commentary: Was this incident after university?

LN: I was in the first year of university then. I realised that if I did not speak up, nothing would change. I approached the zoo management and said that we should put an end to chimp photography. I remember what the curator said — we are good friends now — “Louis, you are just a small boy; you will never win.”

With that, they took my badge and ‘fired me’ for speaking up. I approached a number of Singaporeans, non-government organisations and got the same response: “The Zoo is government, don’t speak up against it.”

Our founder, Mrs Tsao Ng Yu Shun, established the Tsao Foundation in 1993 to empower our elders and help them enjoy the opportunities for maximising personal growth, well-being and sense of fulfilment that longevity offers. In the early 1990s, Singapore was a very different place and concepts such as successful ageing and ageing in place were unheard of. In those days, the idea of home and community-based care for elders was new and the demographic concept of an ageing population was a relatively low-key subject.

Mrs Tsao had a very clear vision for the Tsao Foundation — of elders being supported and taken care of in their own homes by their families and loved ones, so that they can feel secure, surrounded by their families and continue to be in control of their lives. This is also the vision of her granddaughter, Dr Mary Ann Tsao, who translated and operationalised the vision by developing pioneering models of community-based health and social programmes as well as services to enable ageing in place and successful ageing; to empower mature adults to master their own ageing journey over the life course in terms of self-care and self-practice; and to access the right services at the right time.

State and Civil Society on the Same Page on Ageing

By early 2000s, the landscape in Singapore had changed as it became a highly developed society. However, the issue of an ageing population was still a low-key subject and most of the community support for our elders was provided by voluntary welfare organisations (VWOs). There was also low awareness of the differential impact of ageing between men and women. It was against this backdrop that Dr Tsao, then President of the Foundation brought me into her team to lead in the advocacy work on two issues: first, women and ageing, and second, the participation of older people in community affairs.

In 2002, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly met in Spain and more than 160 UN member states debated and adopted the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing (MIPAA). Being sent to Madrid to witness this momentous event and to meet renowned leaders and experts in the field of ageing, was an excellent way to immerse myself in this sector and to start a career that has been both empowering and challenging to say the least.

Most of the time, the Singapore government takes a cautious and prudent approach to signing and adopting international conventions and agreements. This, we understand is because it wishes to take its international commitments seriously and will only sign on to them if it is confident that it will benefit the Singaporean population and that it can implement commitments, policies and programmes effectively.

In the year 2015, on the 50th anniversary of independence, Singapore saw its greatest celebration of history which was impressive because the past is often thought of as something that has held us back from charging towards a better future. The year of SG50 (shorthand for ‘Singapore at 50 years of independence’) saw the conclusion of the National Library Board’s (NLB’s) five-year Singapore Memory Project, which aimed to collect five million memories from ordinary citizens and which funded 74 community projects via the irememberSG fund. 2015 was also the year in which the country’s first World Heritage Site, the Singapore Botanic Gardens, was inscribed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). There are also 71 national monuments gazetted by the National Heritage Board (NHB) and over 7,200 buildings gazetted for conservation by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). The picture for heritage at this point looks rosy, and very different from the context in which the Singapore Heritage Society (SHS) was founded in 1987.

At that time, a group of concerned citizens led by architect, William S W Lim, formed the Singapore Heritage Society to call for heritage conservation and to fill the gap in public discourse on heritage matters. This came soon after URA released its very first Conservation Master Plan for historic areas in 1986. Today, SHS’s primary role continues to be that of an independent voice for heritage conservation in Singapore, articulating principles and disseminating knowledge based on research and international best practices. What are the issues at the forefront of the Society’s concerns in the year 2016? What approaches can we take to achieve SHS’s vision of ‘Giving a Future to Our Past’?